Talk:Black people
This one needs some revising. TR 16:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC) Actually, I'm not sure it's necessary at all. Turtle Fan 18:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC) Names Good move deleting the names section. As I recall, though, the names were used as a few in-jokes to telegraph something about the characters, such as Spartacus and Gracchus, which the section had mentioned. I believe Apicius was a famous chef, so HT named a famous black chef Apicius. Then of course there's Cassius, of whom we heard "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look," which is already on the Shakespearean allusions name. Cincinnatus lived near Cincinnati, it's true. Also, the first half of his character arc was getting sucked deeply into the intrigue of the Great War and then went back to his normal life, which obliquely reminds me of Lucius Quinctus Cincinnatus. Cincy's mother, Livia, got old and her health rapidly declined. We met her when she was healthy but she wasn't healthy for long. Same story with Tony Soprano's mother Livia, though Mrs Driver was not a horrible, evil woman. Then again, she was introduced in 1998 and The Sopranos didn't debut until 1999. Which reminds me, women's names were a lot more likely to be ordinary. Three generations of Driver women were named Livia, Elizabeth, and Amanda--nothing remotely unusual about any of those. Scipio's wife and daughter were Bathsheba and Antoinette--certainly not pedestrian, but not exactly exotic either. There was Cherry. That sounds like the name a slaveholder would slap on a woman intended for a brothel. Anyway, many of the names came from Scripture as well as from antiquity. That would be more familiar to the black population; if their education in general had been neglected (though Scipio was apparently educated well beyond the level of most Confederates just because it amused the Colletons), most of them still knew the Bible and would know who Uriah and Jeroboam and Malachi were. That would be true of most white Rebs as well. Turtle Fan 01:58, January 18, 2011 (UTC) :This comment, with some modification, would be a fine addition to the Parallels page, or some sort of Literary comment page. TR 02:25, January 18, 2011 (UTC) ::I'm thinking we might need an Easter Eggs page in general for stuff that isn't exactly literary or parallel or whatever. Turtledove's got a ton of those, though I'm only coming up with two or three right now, which is why I don't make it now. Turtle Fan 02:41, January 18, 2011 (UTC) Also, I was wondering if we could retitle this article. I can't put my finger on it but "black people" seems vaguely inappropriate as an article title. Turtle Fan 01:58, January 18, 2011 (UTC) :I think that was the basis of my objection to it way back when. Since this is primarily focused on North Americans of African descent, perhaps "Afican-Americans" would be an appropriate title? Then again, it does cover blacks in Africa. TR 02:25, January 18, 2011 (UTC) ::I was thinking we might go with the technical language used for racial classification, but apparently that's "black" or "African-American." This is a very thorny problem: Every word I can think of is either loaded, imprecise, or both. Maybe "Persons of African descent?" But there are non-black people indigenous to Africa, and since Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, that could be understood to mean everyone. Grr. Turtle Fan 02:41, January 18, 2011 (UTC) Joe Steele Did I get the characters right in this section?JonathanMarkoff (talk) 19:10, March 2, 2016 (UTC) :Nope. Charlie overheard a black men tell that to another) (a shoeshine and somebody else, both unnamed). I don't think that small joke deserves an entry here since it really doesn't tell us anything about how blacks were treated, only about general oppression in the USA under Steele. ML4E (talk) 19:55, March 3, 2016 (UTC)